Faced with a choice, the geniuses on the Young Master Rankings each revealed their true characters.
The cautious ones almost all chose to give up the challenge and stay behind to cultivate.
The ambitious and aggressive ones, on the other hand, mostly chose to continue challenging the Glazed Stele.
As a result, those who chose to continue challenging the Glazed Stele ended up forming the majority. Among them were even some whose rankings weren't particularly high.
As for those who ranked highly, almost all of them chose to continue challenging the Glazed Stele.
Clearly, everyone had been stimulated by the news of the Six Palaces of Inheritance. They were all geniuses on the Young Master Rankings—who would consider themselves inferior to anyone else? Especially those in the top ten, each one convinced they were heaven-blessed, each one believing their potential was limitless.
Maybe they were the very genius born to ride the great tides of heaven and earth?
In the world of martial arts, no genius ever lacked confidence. Moreover, in the martial world, everyone had their own fortuitous encounters. Until the very end, no one could guarantee whether they'd be the one left laughing.
As the old saying went: early gains don't make the victor—it's the late surge that crushes the rest.
Not being in the top three now, or even the top five—none of that mattered. Throughout the history of the
The truly smooth-sailing geniuses who coasted all the way to the pinnacle were few and far between.
So the geniuses gathered here, even those whose rankings weren't particularly high, felt not the slightest dent in their self-confidence.
On the vast Glazed Plaza, beneath the fourth Glazed Stele,
The other geniuses also found their respective positions one after another.
"Seems you've all made your choice. To the geniuses beneath the fourth Glazed Stele, I can only say—you've made a wise choice. But it's equally one where crisis and opportunity coexist. After fifteen days, some among you will surely be kicked out of here. But some will surely succeed in staying. Remember—while contemplating the Glazed Stele, no whispering to each other, no spiritual sense communication. In short, rely solely on your own talent and comprehension. If you're caught cheating, you'll be expelled on the spot."
Those fellow-sect geniuses who had originally planned to pool their knowledge with one another silently groaned upon hearing this. It seemed every detail of the Glazed King Tower was meticulously rigorous—there was absolutely no room for cheating.
This didn't surprise Jiang Chen in the slightest. If these Glazed Steles could be cheated, then once one person grasped the meaning, they could easily bring everyone else along to grasp it too.
That would render the entire trial meaningless.
Jiang Chen shot an encouraging glance at Third Young Master Ji, then focused his mind and began to prepare.
Based on his experience with the first three Glazed Steles, even if the difficulty of the fourth was elevated, Jiang Chen was confident he could handle it.
He stilled his mind and held his breath, waiting for the imagery of the fourth Glazed Stele to appear.
The entire area fell deathly silent. Everyone was self-disciplined enough not to disrupt the atmosphere or bring any negative impact upon others.
Because everyone understood perfectly well that whoever caused trouble in a setting like this—even if they weren't expelled by the Glazed King Tower—would be drowned in everyone else's scorn, and upon leaving, things certainly wouldn't go well for them.
Jiang Chen fixed his gaze upon the imagery of the fourth Glazed Stele.
This time, the Glazed Stele displayed a formation—more precisely, a trapping formation.
"Each of you can see this formation. Now, imagine you are trapped inside it. You must use your spiritual sense to deduce a method of breaking it. Anyone who successfully breaks the formation within fifteen days will be deemed to have comprehended the fourth Glazed Stele."
This time, the difficulty had indeed increased significantly.
Using spiritual sense to deduce formations wasn't unusual. What was unusual was that this formation—upon first glance, many people couldn't find any thread to follow at all. That was the most challenging part.
When Jiang Chen saw this formation, however, his composure was perfectly calm. He could be considered quite an expert in formations. Although he hadn't encountered this particular formation in "The Hundred Formations Compendium," many formations shared common ground in their underlying essence.
Most importantly, having studied "The Hundred Formations Compendium" and combining it with his knowledge of formations from his previous life, Jiang Chen knew exactly how to approach a formation.
How to read a formation, analyze a formation, and break a formation—there was a systematic methodology to all of it.
Of course, if your strength was overwhelming enough, you could face a formation and smash through it with brute force, or use all manner of heaven-defying treasures to break it.
But this trial required simulating the breaking of a formation through spiritual sense alone. That meant you had to truly comprehend the formation and then discover the correct method of unraveling it.
This method had to be a genuine formation-breaking technique—not brute force, not treasure-based. Such approaches clearly wouldn't pass this test.
Because the core of this challenge was testing one's knowledge of formations—a martial artist's mastery over formation arts. To put it bluntly, it was testing one's foundation in formations.
A truly top-tier genius had to be capable of facing all manner of unexpected situations and navigating any scenario.
A trapping formation was naturally one of the obstacles a rising genius would inevitably encounter. A martial artist who knew nothing about formations could absolutely never reach the pinnacle on the path of the strong.
The path of martial cultivation would never be entirely free of formation-based entrapment.